


olvidarme

by neyvenger (jjjat3am)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 18:47:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11538261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjjat3am/pseuds/neyvenger
Summary: After he retires, Stevie goes back to school.





	olvidarme

**Author's Note:**

> Biggest love to Mina, who helped with the Spanish and encouraged me, and to Juliette, for the French.
> 
> Written for the photo prompt of the footballprompts community

 

*

 

“I wish I had done more in school, you know?” he tells the interviewer. “Especially languages. It would have really helped me if I paid more attention to that.”

 

“Well, maybe once you retire, you can go back to school,” the interviewer says, then turns back to the camera to finish her spiel, oblivious to his surprised look. It’s just one interview of many. He’s done over a thousand in his career.

 

Each a study in ways to stumble over his words, and repeat the same ones over and over, trying to disguise his accent, because forgetting could cost him. Forgetting always seemed to cost him.

 

Stevie drives home that afternoon and promptly - forgets.

 

He’s got other things to worry about. Things that aren’t himself.

  


*

  


It’s not until a couple of years later that he comes back to the idea of going back to school.

 

LA was nice but too warm. Apparently, people went there to retire, but all he’s ever known were steel gray skies and the Mersey winding its way slowly through the morning. In contrast, the sunshine, the playful frigid ocean waves, they feel like a mockery.

 

So, he goes back. To the city that’s got his name written in its bones.

 

He thinks that it’ll be enough to cure the restless energy in his body. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t.

 

There used to be this one thing he could do, that’d make his waves settle, his thoughts steady in their banks. But he doesn’t do that anymore. Too old. Too tired. Too injured.

 

And he hasn’t got the focus to bounce the ball off the garage doors anymore, not like when he was a kid when he’d kick and kick until the thump sounded right.

 

He feels more lost now than he was then.

  


*

  


“You’ve just gotta find another thing you’re good at,” Carra tells him, and it’s easy for him to say.

 

He’s always been a loudmouth first, before anything else. Kept yelling until his opponent backed down. Makes sense that he’d just continue to go through life yelling.

 

Though, then again, retirement has changed Carra too. He used to hate Gary Neville.

  


*

  


There are Danish classes advertised in the newspaper.

 

It’s never been his ambition to learn Danish.

 

(never has been his ambition to learn anything, really, except -

 

the arc of a free kick, the millimeter precision of a perfect pass, the goal -

 

but in a way, you can’t learn those things)

 

So he signs up. They’re held in an old council building, the edges of brick crumbling, but proud. The classroom, if you could call it that, smells like mold and dust, and most of the students are old ladies.

 

They recognize him, of course. You’d be hard to find anyone in this city that doesn’t.

 

Still, they’re polite about it. They ask him for autographs to show their grandchildren, and they laugh when he says ‘I’m one of you now’. They pat his hand gently with their fragile boned fingers like he’s holding some great sadness that they can dab away.

 

The teacher is young, and blonde, and Danish. She looks him in the eye and there’s no recognition there. He likes that too, in a way.

  


*

  


Once in a while, he’ll pick up the phone and call Dan on the phone. It feels like he needs the reminder sometimes, of what unconditional loyalty is like. Of what it means to love something so much that you stitch it in your knuckles and hold it in your fingers.

 

He thinks sometimes he needs the reminder that sometimes it brings you pain.

 

But he can hear Dan’s smile through the phone as he tries to fit his clumsy mouth around the sharp Danish vowels, and it makes him feel closer to him somehow.

 

Like he’s done his part to lessen that pain.

  


*

  


Portuguese is next.

 

He can still remember meeting Philipe for the first time, the way he’d look out at the world so frightened, so unsure, everything so painfully foreign. Until he got the ball at his feet, and the world reordered itself around him.

 

The game, their feet, the universal translator.

 

Stevie hasn’t got that anymore. So he goes to class. And he pronounces the words again and again and again until they sound right.

  


*

  


German is next and Klopp laughs uproariously and brings him a dictionary the next time they meet.

 

Then, French and Carra asks him, “What are you even doing?” and Stevie says,“ _Ferme ta gueule connard._ ”

 

Italian, Swedish, Polish. Russian, for no other reason than forcing his hand to write shapes it’s never traced feels good when he gets it right.

  


*

  


He thinks about university and it just doesn’t seem realistic. Maybe that’s why he does it in the end. He’s always enjoyed doing things that didn’t seem very realistic.

 

He takes Spanish classes. For many reasons.

 

It feels like maybe it could finally make him understand why Fernando’s ‘ _lo siento_ ’ sounded like a goodbye, and how it felt for your name to be sung like a curse where there was once only love or something like it.

 

Or maybe he’ll finally get why every one of Luis’ sentences started with a ‘ _che_ ’ like he still needed to catch your attention like you needed to be reminded of his presence by your side.

 

Or, maybe he needed to understand the way Xabi’s mouth wrapped around ‘ _corazón_ ’, his tongue pressing down on the vowels like he was trying to hold them back. Stevie had always understood him least of all.

 

Some part of him hopes to understand why these men held his name in their mouth like a prayer, and why they looked at him like he held all the answers when in reality he rarely remembers having any.

 

Though then again, people did that in English too, and he understood that perfectly fine. Just not that part where they called him a hero. Just not that part where they expected him to lead the way.

 

Maybe he knew why, once. Maybe he just forgot.

 

The things that he forgot always cost him.

 

*

 

“What’s Gerrard doing, learning Spanish and shit? He doesn’t even speak proper English, for fuck’s sake.”

 

*

 

The lecture hall is never quiet.

 

It’s a muted kind of noise - the brush of fabric against a seat, an indrawn breath, the scratch of a pen against paper, or fingers on a keyboard. The metronome of the lecturer’s voice.

 

The sunlight breaks through the curtains, highlighting the dust mites in their air.

 

Stevie watches it, he listens, and he -

 

settles.

 

*

 

“Stevie?”

 

“Hola, Xabi.”

 

“Tu pronunciación ha mejorado mucho.”

 

“Creo que necesitamos hablar.”

 

“...si, puede ser.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> \- I saw this interview where Stevie says he wished he did better in school, but I can't find it now. It inspired this.  
> \- _“Ferme ta gueule connard.”_ \- Shut the fuck up, you asshole.  
> \- _‘lo siento’_ \- I'm sorry  
>  \- _‘che’_ \- roughly 'hey', putting it at the start of sentences is characteristic of Uruguayan Spanish  
>  \- _corazón_ \- heart  
>  \- _“Tu pronunciación ha mejorado mucho.”_ \- your pronunciation has gotten better.  
>  \- _“Creo que necesitamos hablar.”_ \- we need to talk  
>  \- _“...si, puede ser.”_ \- yes maybe we do


End file.
